Cindy Bullens: In a year when the percentage of woman vocalists with major releases jumped 90% from 1976, this young girl from West Newbury, Mass. debuted on United Artists records with the LP, Desire Wire. She started out as a background singer for disco hits like Disco Tex's "Get Dancin'" and then for Elton John, Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan. After playing Boston in the early seventies, she split, like many before her, to the west coast. She first recorded with Bob Crewe (of the Slay-Crewe team, who discovered Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon) and was soon off touring with Elton John after crashing a Rocket Records party. The lead cut, "Survivor", reached #56, 1978.

Joaquin Phoenix broke down on the set of his latest movie recently and started banging his head against a wall, reports IMDB.com, because a scene reportedly sparked memories of his brother River Phoenix's tragic death. The star - who was 19 when his brother died of a drug overdose outside the hip Los Angeles nightclub Viper Room in 1993 - is filming the Johnny Cash biopic ``Walk the Line.'' Phoenix reportedly had to be taken away in an ambulance.

Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, told a TV engineering trade group audience in Washington Wednesday that TV news operations "need to have safeguards to prevent reporters from infusing their opinions into news reports."

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

"Bush shirked his presidential duties with regard to the nation's fiscal health," Rocklin said. "Take, for example, the controversial memo in which Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin states that the federal deficit will reach a record high of $422 billion this year. This memo unequivocally shows that Bush was AWOL on the domestic front."

Rocklin said the documents indicate that Bush used his family's political connections to obtain his job in the executive branch.

"Bush stepped ahead of more qualified candidates to take what he thought would be a cushy job," Rocklin said. "Then, after signing up for a four-year term, he largely abandoned his post in 2004 to go work on a political campaign."

The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Bremer’s reforms unleashed forces that the neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed insurrections inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming themselves. These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you lynched, burned alive, or beheaded.

This article explains that Bush did have a plan for post-war Iraq - the wrong plan.

Using only the universal and powerful Macromedia Flash plug in, running in a browser window, you can keep in touch with your colleagues wherever you are in the world. Not only can you see their present 'state-of-being', or get an immediate response to a 'quick' question using the inbuilt text chat, as with many other types of software, but you can actually see them working at their desk. As if they are just next door!

This specification defines the Easy News Topics (ENT) Module for the RSS2.0 syndication format. ENT is intended to be a very simple standard for describing how topic information can be introduced into an RSS2.0 news feed.

This looks like what we need to be able to add descriptive information like Author, Description and URLs to an RSS feed.I was wrong.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Next month, songs by the Beastie Boys, David Byrne and 14 others will appear on a compilation CD whose contents are meant to be copied freely online, remixed or sampled by other artists for use in their own new recordings.

"The Wired CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share." was compiled by the editors of Wired magazine, of San Francisco, as an experimental implementation of a new kind of intellectual-property license called Creative Commons. About 750,000 copies of the disc are to be distributed free with the magazine's November issue. The disc also will be handed out to audience members at a benefit concert by Mr. Byrne and others tomorrow night in New York.

So I guess we'll be able to download the songs soon after audience members get to an Internet connection. ;-)

In announcing his choice, Markson noted that TiVo enables users to skip over commercials, dramatically reducing the power of big corporations in American life. He also explained that more than any other potential running mate, TiVo has a demonstrated ability to pay close attention to what Americans are doing, and what they might want and need in the future.

Monday, September 20, 2004

iSpider is a media aggregator which automatically downloads files to your computer or portable device, leaving you 'one-click-away' from latest media feeds. The whole process is done on it's own, so you don't have to select files, search for them or click links to download the media. All you do is specify some hotspots where to download from and wait to get yourself the content.

I like the idea of waking up in the morning and listening to mp3's that iSpider has downloaded for me, but I'd like to understand how it's doing it and when it runs.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

THE RITZ-CARLTON CLUB® LEVEL: The Ritz-Carlton Club® Lounge and accommodations are located on the twelfth floor of the hotel. Open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, The Club Lounge features five complimentary food and beverage presentations, newspapers, international magazines, and adult and children's games. Club guests enjoy exclusive use of The Club Lounge and the exclusive services by our dedicated Club concierge staff. The Club Lounge offers wireless Internet connectivity allowing any guest traveling with a laptop that features an installed Wireless Network card to access the internet, wirelessly.

Jesse Ventura and George Farah write The debate debacle in today's Globe, and explain whay the Presidential Debates are screwed up:

The American people never knew why a candidate they wanted to see was excluded, why the moderator did not challenge the candidates' misleading statements with follow-up questions, or why the debates were held on the same night as the World Series. Dole and Clinton were able to conceal their manipulation of the debates because of the complicity of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

There's hope:

This year, a coalition of 60 civic groups formed a genuinely nonpartisan Citizens' Debate Commission to host transparent and informative presidential debates.

Those debates would feature engaging and innovative formats, include the candidates that a majority of eligible voters want to see, and address a variety of pressing national issues. Now, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry must decide whether to courageously participate in real presidential debates that maximize voter education or to manipulate the debates and hide behind an unsuitable commission.

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They're going to make a movie about the Big Dig. They'll call it ``The Poseidon Adventure.'' Or maybe ``15 Billion Dollars Under the Sea.'' Or ``Voyage to the Bottom of the Tunnel.'' Another day, another flood.

He then goes on to talk about how much money they've gotten back from contractors:

So far, on a $14.6 billion project, they've recovered $3.5 million.

That would be like if you hired a guy to fix the roof on your house for $10,000, and the first time it rained, the water was coming in from every nook and cranny in your home. And then the contractor told you, hey, that's a shame, so I'm going to give you a refund - here's $30.

That math looks wrong to me.

Isn't $14.6 million to $3.5 million as $10,000 is to $2,400?

Update - Steve Garfield Flunks Math too:
Oops. Made a little typo up there. I was calculating in Millions not Billions! Billions? Who uses Billions? I tried to recalculate the math, but my calculator gave me an error.

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Steve Garfield has a very wry sense of humor, in fact, at the rate he's going, he can take this places.

Excellent! Steve Garfield: Protecting Democracy on the streets of Boston, and very proud of him for doing that because it doesn't matter how trivial the law is, those are the rules, and before you know it you're debating over hanging chads.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

There's a Massachusetts law that is supposed to keep campaigners away from the entrance to polling places.

It states:

Sections 52.03 (22) (d), 53.03 (18) (d), and 54.04 (22) (d) of 950 C.M.R. pertain to candidates and their workers’ rights and restrictions during voting hours and provide as follows:

Within 150 feet of a polling place as defined in 950 CMR . . . no person shall solicit votes for or against, or otherwise promote or oppose, any person or political party or position on a ballot question, to be voted at the current election.

I visited three polling places in Boston today and in two out of three, campaigners were standing outside the front door!

Thursday, September 09, 2004

Brainwashing 101 is a provocative short film showing how universities use tools such as "speech codes" to force political views upon students. In this cutting exposé, documentary filmmakers Maloney, Browning and Greenberg shine a light on political correctness, academic bias, student censorship--even administrative cover-ups of death threats--at three schools: Bucknell University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly).

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

In the past four days, clashes with Iraqi insurgents have claimed the lives of 17 American soldiers. With these deaths, we mark a grim milestone: over 1,000 military men and women have now died in this misconceived war.

Their caskets have been hidden from view, and the President won't visit their graves. And this morning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld diminished their deaths by calling the toll “relatively small.” But it is now time for us to publicly recognize the sacrifice these soldiers have made, and to demand that our leaders serve those in harm's way better in the future.

More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers have now been killed in Iraq. 1,000 of our brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, moms, dads, sons, and daughters have given their lives in service to our country.

To honor them and reflect on the loss of their lives, Americans everywhere are organizing candlelight vigils.

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About Me

Steve is a Social Media Traveler. Companies, brands, and destinations send my wife and I on trips in hopes that we will publicly share our experiences via social media. Examples include opening festivities for the Hermitage Club and traveling with GMC to the Super Bowl. (Go Pats!) We are available for more branded experience trips.